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Aidan Herrick Matthew Lasar History 190U December 18, 2014

Rock, Race, and Payola: The FBI and ’s “”

In the spring of 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched one of its most infamous cases. After receiving numerous reports on a potentially dangerous item that had circulated prolifically around the United States, FBI offices from California to Florida began launching their own investigations into this threat. Much like a virus, the FBI had seen this enemy before, but it took a new form every time it reappeared.

Their foe? Rock n’ roll. The new strain? None other than “Louie Louie,” as performed by

The Kingsmen. Though clearly a silly waste of time to modern audiences that are used to Top 40 songs that border on pornographic, in 1964 Louie Louie and music like it had a reputation for stirring up trouble. If the FBI could find anything obscene about it, such a discovery could launch another rock ‘n’ roll witch hunt like the one rock had experienced during the Payola scandal five years prior. If a dirty utterance were to be found, the FBI would have another feather in its cap, proving their self-proclaimed position as a moral bulwark against enemies of

American virtue. Should a single piece of foul language be present anywhere in the two minute and forty-seven second recording, what more would be necessary to a white society scared of a black uprising to prove that all this “jungle music” was corrupting their kids? In a Rube

Goldberg-esque political mess, the FBI opened this investigation not so much because of the song itself, but because of a general paranoid atmosphere in the United States about race, sex and rock.

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The Players

The Kingsmen came together in 1960 comprised of (rhythm guitar), Lynn

Easton (drums), Mike Mitchell (lead guitar), Don Gallucci (keyboard), and Bob Nordby (bass).

Their name originated from Lynn Easton’s mother reading a story in the paper about a local group also called The Kingsmen that had just broken up.1 A high school band, all of its members had come together to make money as much as to play music. As Ely recalled it, “we’d play at promotions for a pancake mix or a biscuit mix, for mayonnaise… we’d play whatever.”2 Their early years were limited, weighed down both by homework, no independent means of transporting equipment, and parental control over which gigs they took.3 As a result, they started to become known for taking odd gigs, such as the opening of grocery stores.4 Beyond Ely’s great admiration for , The Kingsmen were in the music business for cash, not causes.5

By some means, the band met Ken Chase, the program director for KISN Portland. Chase also owned a teen rock hop, cleverly called The Chase, and he offered them a gig there as a resident house band in 1961. The Kingsmen accepted readily. The Chase was a teen club that offered rock ‘n’ roll and imitation drinks, so The Kingsmen felt right at home, as they were only teens themselves.6 After realizing they could pack the place, the band decided to take it to the next level and pressed Chase to help them record.7 They wanted professional help, having already recorded an admittedly terrible rendition of “Peter Gunn Rock” by themselves the year before. They already knew which song they wanted to play. In April of 1963, they spent one

Friday night gig at The Chase playing a 90 minute set of nothing but what they hoped would be their big hit; the soon-to-be infamous Louie Louie.8

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Originally recorded by in 1956 and popularized in the region by Rockin’

Robin Roberts, Louie Louie had become something of a local anthem in the Pacific Northwest.9

Bands covered it extensively, and it was a staple of the live shows of popular acts.10 The

Kingsmen were no exception. Incidentally, The Kingsmen and Paul Revere and the Raiders would record their renditions the same week in the same studio,11 the Raiders having chosen the song after hearing The Kingsmen perform it at a club called The Coaster.12 The Kingsmen entered the studio the morning after their marathon performance, Chase having insisted that they were ready.

Debate rages still over the recording’s technical aspects, and different Kingsmen offer different stories. Ely argues that the studio was the best studio in the area,13 though being the best is not a guarantee of quality equipment.14 The microphone hung suspended on a boom, and tauntingly refused to go low enough to rest comfortably in front of Ely’s mouth. Ely’s vocal chords were raw from the experiment in endurance they’d weathered the night before, and he had to tilt his head back to even sing directly at the mic. Mitchell’s solo fell apart like he had never played it before. By the end, the band was grateful the practice take was over, but learned to their surprise that Chase thought it was great. Chase bundled the warm-up take with the B-side

“Haunted Castle,” the boys paid $50 for studio time, and that was that.15

Despite every reason for it not to, their rendition of Louie Louie shot up the charts. It played regularly on local stations for about two months, but like most northwest groups it failed to go national. Regardless, egos flared, and a battle for creative control ensued. The point of contention had been Easton, who’d been demanding creative control on the basis that his mother still owned the right to the band name. He had been practicing sax, and wanted to be the

Herrick 4 frontman, and told Ely to either get on drums or get out. Doing just that, Ely and Nordby walked out. Three months after recording one of the most popular rock songs of all time, the Louie

Louie lineup of The Kingsmen unceremoniously ended.16

Then, in October, Louie Louie once again rocketed back onto the Top 40 stage. A popular DJ in Boston, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg, featured the song on his show in a position of reverence. He played the single twice in a row as part of a regular segment on the worst song he had heard all week.17 After that, phone calls flooded WMEX Boston, with callers demanding to know more about Louie Louie. It began flying off the racks of record stores all over New

England. After this resurgence, Louie Louie started getting picked up in the South and the

Midwest. This pickup in sales put those soon-to-be infamous 45’s in the hands of children in

Florida and Indiana whose parents would pen some very angry letters.

The Investigation

In early 1964, concerned parents began to get agitated. Rock was already questionable, but it had seemed like rock ‘n’ roll had finally crossed the moral threshold into filth. In school hallways, on the bus, and on playgrounds, children had begun circulating copies of the lyrics to

Louie Louie, complete with lurid words and obscene phrases. Parents, school employees, and members of churches took to writing letters, lyrics enclosed, and began firing them off to whichever government power they felt most appropriate to handle it.

Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a tradition of investigating perceived threats, legality be damned, there was an actual legal basis for looking into Louie Louie. The passage of the Comstock Act in 1873 illegalized the transportation of obscene material through the United States postal system, as well as any information regarding such materials.18 Herrick 5

Empowered as an interstate police force by the Mann Act of 1910, the Bureau of Investigation (it would not be organized as the FBI until 192419) made it its business to deal with obscene material,20 known on FBI documents as ITOM (Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material).

When sending obscene evidence between offices, the FBI shipped all potentially obscene materials in thick paper envelopes with clear OBSCENE stamps, lest the FBI inadvertently become guilty of the very crime they were investigating.21 Copies of “real” lyrics containing lines such as “at night at 10, I lay her again”22 and “hey yes bitch, hey lovemaker now bald my bone,”23 could very much have qualified as obscene in 1960’s America. On this legal basis, the

FBI investigated Louie Louie to clear or condemn it for obscenity.

Before the FBI began its investigation in 1964, Louie Louie had already been investigated by the Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department, and the Post

Office.24 The first investigation was prompted by a letter from Indiana containing a copy of the

“real” lyrics, addressed to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, on February 4, 1964. Three days later, it was the FBI’s problem.25 The Indianapolis field office interviewed the redacted letter- writer’s daughter six weeks later, she having been the one who purchased the record. She informed the agents that obscene words were audible if the 45 RPM disk were played at 33 1/3 speed. Lester Irvin, the Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) for Indiana, advised that it may legally be obscene,26 and therefore illegal to send through the mail.27 Matthew Welch, the governor of Indiana, had already unofficially banned the song from airplay in the state about two weeks before the FBI received the letter,28 though he was never approached or contacted by the

FBI for this action.29 An Indianapolis prosecutor argued that it didn’t even matter if the song contained obscene lyrics: the whole song, from the style to the recording quality, was “an abomination.”30 Herrick 6

Meanwhile, on February 10, the FBI office in Tampa received a similar letter and lyrics from a school official in Sarasota, Florida. Within a week, the Tampa office had obtained a copy of the lyrics from Limax Music, the rights holder to the song at the time.31 It sent off both versions of the lyrics and a disk to the labs in DC. In mid-March, San Diego’s field office got in on the action as well.32 The report follows the same story, of a teen found with a copy of dirty lyrics, and a concerned parent that could not decipher the recording to their own satisfaction. So

San Diego too sent off a copy of Louie Louie and its “real” lyrics to the DC labs. On April 2, the

FBI lab declared that they could not determine the words one way or the other on both the

Tampa and San Diego disks.33 On April 14, the AUSA in Tampa informed the FBI that this case would not stand up in court.34 The Indianapolis investigation concluded on April 17 after receiving similar lab reports.35

This should be the end of the story, but it is not. As urban legends tend to do, Louie Louie made a new round and found an audience in Michigan. And, once again, complaints began rolling in. After almost exactly a year of laying fallow, the FBI offices in Detroit reopened the investigation.36 As a result, AUSA Robert Grace, after receiving a complaint about the song in

March from some suburban parents, set up a meeting between the FBI, the FCC, the complainants, and himself.37 Headquarters, seeming to already know how this would play out, sent the Detroit Special Agent in Charge (SAC) a copy of the Tampa, Indianapolis, and San

Diego reports. A memo attached explicitly stated that both the justice department and several

AUSA’s had found this to be a pointless endeavor.38 Meanwhile, the Detroit office simultaneously sent a Louie Louie 45 and some fresh “real” lyrics to the DC labs, and sent a request to the office in New York City, asking that they interview somebody at Wand Records, the label that had distributed the song.39 Unsurprisingly, on May 17, the DC labs reported back to Herrick 7

Detroit, stating that the record could not be understood; the fourth record to be deemed so.40

However, the Detroit office continued to field several more complaints, and AUSA Grace refused to decline prosecution until New York reported back.41 Memos continued to be sent to the FCC, though if they took any action it is not noted in the FBI records. A week later, alarmed by New York’s apparent disinterest in the matter, the Detroit SAC sent a letter directly to Hoover requesting he force New York’s hand. The letter received Hoover’s initial “-H,” and two days later, the New York office acquired a copy of the single from Wand.42

The new surge in enthusiasm did not impress the Justice Department. In a letter dated

July 2, the Assistant Attorney General Fred Vinson Jr. ordered that the Detroit office begin “to bring the case to a logical conclusion.”43 The civilian complaints were apparently too numerous, and the song too popular. If the FBI did not give a definitive answer soon, the problem stood the risk of becoming a congressional one, much like Payola had.44 Still, Detroit refused to surrender the fight. On August 30, a memorandum was sent out to both the and Los Angeles offices. Seattle was given the task of interviewing Jerry Dennon of the Craig Corporation, a party responsible in the song’s recording, while Los Angeles was sent after Richard Berry, the author of the song, and Limax Music, the license holder of the lyrics.45 Both offices, through these interviews, assembled general histories of the song from Richard Berry up until the Kingsmen.

Everyone consulted also claimed that the lyrics were perfectly clean. On August 23, the New

York office furnished the FBI laboratory (which at this point had almost half a dozen copies of

Louie Louie on hand) with the master magnetic tape.46 After what could only have been a suspenseful month, the DC labs finally reported back that the recordings were all in fact identical, and that the obscenity or lack thereof was just as indeterminable as ever.47

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The case, after nearly 18 months, began to come to a close when a redacted member of the Kingsmen presented themselves to the FBI in Portland.48 Evidence suggests it was either

Lynn Easton or Mike Mitchell,49 though I argue it was probably Mitchell, for reasons that will be explained below. In his statement, Easton/Mitchell claimed that the song had not been practiced very much, an odd claim considering that they’d played it 90 minutes straight the night previous to the recording. Further, he claimed that rumors only started spreading after the song started being distributed by Wand, which dragged its heels in denying the claim until Governor Welch had it banned. As with everyone else interviewed, Easton/Mitchell denied adamantly the usage of any obscene language, accidental or otherwise. Salting the wound, an unnamed staff member at KISN Portland, the radio station that had commissioned the song in the first place, claimed that singer Jack Ely did not even know all the words at the time of the recording.50 In a memo dated November 30, the Detroit FBI office surrendered the point, stating that “a listener might think he heard anything being said that he imagined.”51 In light of this, AUSA Grace finally bent on December 2, declaring that no evidence could support an obscenity charge and that investigations should cease immediately.52 The DC labs returned the master tape to the New

York office to return to Wand, and the remaining 45 singles were destroyed.53

As to the argument of Mitchell or Easton being the redacted party, it is noteworthy that

Easton had good reason to stay far away from the potential scandal. As can be heard in the Louie

Louie recording, Easton accidentally clicked his drumsticks together, and subsequently lost the drumbeat. Out of frustration, he yelled an audible “fuck” which can be heard in the background at roughly the 0:55 minute mark.54 With this in mind, it would be reasonable to assume that the

FBI, the self-proclaimed bloodhounds of obscenity and immorality, would be the last people

Easton would want to talk to about anything. Herrick 9

This marks the greatest irony of the entire affair: even after almost two years, the work of seven bureau offices, and the analysis of over half a dozen copies of the record, all on the taxpayers dime, the FBI still missed the one damning expletive that would have tied the entire investigation together. The FBI never approached Jack Ely, who after Easton’s coup would have had reason to sell him out.55 What threatened to be another great rock ‘n’ roll scandal instead is remembered today as a trivial anecdote. This spectacular failure renders the investigation so ridiculous as to garner ridiculous explanations. Eric Predoehl, the man who unearthed the FBI file in the first place, claimed that Louie Louie was investigated for representing “freedom at it’s purest level (sic).”56 The concerned parent that authored that first letter to Attorney General

Kennedy had stated with great conviction that “these morons have gone too far.”57 On December

6, 1965, when the investigation came to a quiet and unsatisfactory end, these words that had helped inspire so much now seemed far too self-aware.

Maintaining Morality

This investigation and others like it was not without popular support. This is evidenced in the FBI’s own records in a letter sent to Hoover by a member of women’s group from Flint,

Michigan. She implored of Hoover his advice on how to protect the youth from “pornography” like Louie Louie, and requested some FBI literature on the matter.58 Hoover cordially responded, reassuring her that the FBI would do everything in its power to save kids from “unhealthy channels” of thought.59 His response included a bundle of fifty FBI anti-pornography pamphlets.

As he penned his response, he had the Bureau run a background check on her.60

Works such as “Combating Merchants of Filth: The Role Of The FBI” spun tales of innocent young Americans that had been unfortunately exposed to obscene materials and Herrick 10 transformed into criminal deviants.61 The rhetoric, though obviously exaggerated, paints a decent portrait of Hoover’s moral worries. The success of Louie Louie surely only exacerbated them.

According to an FBI informant, sales of Louie Louie had actually increased due to the controversy, with teens grabbing the disk just to see if you could really hear the secret lyrics when it was slowed down.62 Corporations had not yet figured out that they could cash in on teenage rebellion, and even when they did profit from scandal, they got nervous.63 Juvenile delinquency and moral decay were hot-button issues with post-war parents, and to Hoover the youth were the front lines in a global war in both morality and politics.64

When Hoover came to head the Bureau of Investigation in 1924, he brought his straight- laced sense of morality with him.65 A sober man of high standards, Hoover expected the same from his agents and from America in general. The FBI would often tout juvenile delinquency as one of the greatest threats to America.66 Hoover historically viewed American security, both internal and external, to be his jurisdiction, evidenced by both his failed international spy network established during World War II67 and by his sense of resentment and betrayal at

Truman’s creation of the Central Intelligence Agency. As the Louie Louie investigation demonstrates, the FBI felt that such matters were theirs to judge even after several other government agencies had given their clearance.

The concern for , despite the hype, arguably had a base in reality. The entertainment industry had only a decade previously been living under the gun of Joseph

McCarthy’s red-baiting and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee’s (HUAC) hunt for subversives, and show business had no shortage of scandals for them to dig up.68 Although

Payola investigations began in 1959, rock ‘n’ roll’s number was called far earlier in 1953.69 The

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American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), a music licensing organization, sought congressional action against Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) on charges of monopoly.70 Its only competitor, ASCAP’s rivalry with BMI stemmed back to its creation in 1939 by radio broadcasters sick of ASCAP’s high fees.71 ASCAP’s crusade to crush

BMI had been constant since then.

Payola had in fact been around as long as recorded music and radio, but had not become an issue outside the industry until music made by African Americans began to become popular with American youth on both sides of the color line.72 Payola in rock ‘n’ roll confirmed for many the stereotype of black people being conniving and untrustworthy.73 Specializing in handling licenses for the niche sounds of black musicians, country groups, and now rock ‘n’ roll, BMI’s power in the industry surged along with parents concern for their children’s moral fiber. Unlike their opponent, ASCAP had no idea how to sell music that appealed to kids.74 Arguing that only

Payola could account for rock’s popularity and that radio executives were in league with BMI and deliberately shirking songs owned by their rivals, ASCAP finally got the congressional action it desired.75

The deliberations dragged on and bounced between committees for years. A licensing giant, ASCAP’s claims were entirely unfounded. They still held 85% of the licenses on music broadcast over the airwaves,76 but the racial controversy surrounding rock music provided an excellent rope to noose around their competition. ASCAP painted itself as being bullied by the independent labels represented by BMI, claiming that they took more than their market share by throwing money at DJs to spin their disks.77 Expert witnesses testified that BMI had been using

“hidden persuasion” to destroy Americans’ ability to choose for themselves.78 Newspaper

Herrick 12 articles and magazine columns weighed in, ascribing to rock everything from a musical conspiracy to cause a “total breakdown of all reticences [sic] about sex,”79 to inciting teens to participate in “jungle rhythm… orgies of sex and violence.”80

And then, in 1959, Payola exploded.At the Americana Hotel in Miami, the broadcasting giant and father of the Top 40 format Todd Storz threw a massive convention for DJs and radio executives. Decadent and over the top, the convention gave DJs access to open bars and to prostitutes instructed to withhold their services until they obtained promises that a DJ would play a certain song or artist.81 The media had a field day, and congress launched a full investigation into Payola. DJ after DJ was called forth, their past scrutinized. Many freely admitted accepting money to play records, as it constituted a quietly accepted supplement to a DJs otherwise dismal pay.82 Many rock DJs, some with their arms firmly twisted by the evidence against them, stated that this “junk music” would never have become popular without Payola.83 Rock ‘n’ roll DJs bore the heaviest of the brunt, most notably Alan “Moondog” Freed and Hal Jackson. Freed, a white man widely accepted as the key DJ responsible for bringing black music to white audiences, admitted to accepting money and spent the rest of his life blacklisted. Hal Jackson, a black radio personality for WBLS who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr., weathered a more humiliating experience. Though Payola was not an illegal practice, police very publically arrested Jackson, and WBLS fired him almost immediately thereafter.84 Though absolved of his

Payola charges, Jackson spent the next several years as a janitor. Often visiting Freed, Jackson would comment bitterly that the white establishment had “[totally] destroyed” the life of a man that had made the careers of countless black artists and musicians.85 Not reporting an act of

Payola (though not the practice itself) received a ban by congress in 1960.86

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Payola left its mark on rock, and on the American mind, even becoming a household name. J. Edgar Hoover, in a statement defending the integrity of the FBI, explained that “in these days of Payola, [an agent] does not allow personal temptation and insidious favoritism to interfere with the validity of his investigation.”87 Although the FBI never investigated Payola, it was highly aware of it as a moral threat. Radio commentator Paul Harvey had even told Hoover to his face over dinner that “gangsters control the jukebox.”88 It stands to reason then that when

Louie Louie and the urban legends associated with it reared its collective head in 1964, the idea of some malevolence on the part of The Kingsmen would not have been an insane suggestion to the Bureau. The flood of concerned letter-writers certainly didn’t think so.

Rock and Race

Louie Louie, as a controversy, was not just an unsettling issue with rock, it was yet another unsettling issue with rock. Segregationists, confusing correlation with causation, attributed Payola, along with his use of federal troops in Little Rock, to Eisenhower’s leading the country into a state of moral decay.89 Hoover himself held deeply racist beliefs,90 exclusively hiring white agents, and the FBI had internally declared all “race records” to be inherently obscene.91 Elvis Presley, arguably the best-selling artist of all time,92 agitated rock’s racial issues. A white artist playing black music, the “king of rock ‘n’ roll” would, when referred to by the title, often humbly admit that the real masters of the music were acts like Fats Domino or

Little Richard. This demonstrated not appropriation, but a willing crossing of racial divides.93

Elvis openly defied segregation, attending a “colored night” at the Memphis Fairgrounds theme park and delighting attendees,94 and later broke race lines at a segregated charity event.95 Paul

Ackerman, an editor for Billboard Magazine, claims to have regularly taken calls from music

Herrick 14 executives demanding that Elvis stop being listed on the Top 40 charts, their reason being that

Elvis played “black music.”96 It no longer mattered then if a performer was white as long as what they were playing was rock.97 The racial background of rock is evident in the Louie Louie FBI file, which explicitly described it as “a calypso-type song,”98 though to be fair, calypso music had seen a rise in popularity in the United States.99

Rock ‘n’ roll did not start out as an issue of civil rights. Black parents were just as concerned about the perceived moral shortfalls of rock as white parents.100 Martin Luther King

Junior openly denounced it as “degrading and immoral,”101 and black parents did not find common cause until it became clear that the rock debate had evolved into a fight over segregation and equality.102 Black and white kids were meeting at sock hops. White children listened to black music on their private pocket sized transistor radios.103 Rather than playing the covers by white artists to keep black voices off the airwaves, Alan Freed and DJs like him played

Little Richard instead of Pat Boone.104 In the background of it all, arguably as early as the late

1940’s, the FBI kept an eye firmly on this impending threat to white society.105 In his obscenity file, Hoover actively kept a list of potentially obscene phonograph records.106 In fact, Louie

Louie was not the first of its kind. The FBI had before attempted five separate prosecutions for the mailing of obscene records in 1948 alone.107 Unfortunately, documents relaying the outcomes of these cases are unavailable, though at least one had a successful conviction.108

Despite these past successes, at the end of 1965, the Bureau had nothing to show for their efforts. In the cultural darkness, the FBI had pounced at the last echoes of Payola and caught nothing. America had never before been “so aware of – or confused about - its teenagers,”109 and the FBI proved no exception. The generation’s love of music made by a people that had been so

Herrick 15 hated made no sense, and neither did the teenage desire to stick it to The Man. 110 Hoover’s personal policy, “never embarrass the Bureau,”111 was maintained, and the case stayed classified until 1984.112 But the legacy of the investigation, much like the duh duh duh, duh duh riffs that open Louie Louie, have left their impact, and show a very clear image of a different time and place. Louie Louie, even as a teenage trick to get rich quick, unwittingly imparts more meaning than the artists intended. Ten years before, some young boys from traditionally racist Oregon113 would probably never have considered putting together a swing or jazz band. The entire mess encapsulated an inescapable irony that had been terrifying The Man: the great disturbance that had felt so imminent in the racially-charged 60’s pitted them not against another race, but against another generation. Louie Louie, and rock music in general, played its small part in forging a united front against hatred, a matter to which the FBI could not stand idly by. Hoover and the entire established order remained resistant to change, and in the end Hoover found himself completely ineffectual. Even with a national security network that had pioneered criminology and police technology out of the law enforcement dark ages, the countless man hours spent dedicating to finding filth still missed the only “fuck” in a song less than three minutes long. The paranoia of what lay beyond the color line, that inexorable moral fear, had not been inherited by the new generation of American youngsters. The kids, black and white, continued to rock on.

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Notes

1 Dave Marsh, Louie Louie: The History And Mythology of the World’s Most Famous Rock Song; Including In Full Detail Its Torture and Persecution At The Hands of the Kingsmen, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and a Cast of Millions, (New York: Hyperion, 1992), p. 86. 2 Marsh, ibid. 3 Marsh, p. 87. 4 Marsh, ibid. 5 Marsh, p. 100. 6 Marsh, p. 82. 7 Marsh, p. 88. 8 Marsh, ibid. 9 Marsh, p. 46. 10 Marsh, p. 70. 11 Marsh, p. 95. 12 Marsh, p. 94. 13 Interview, “Jack Ely Original Singer of The Kingsman & Louie Louie. Calling in to set the record straight,” Allan Handelman, last accessed December 16, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMdw3sK-1Zc. 14 Marsh, p. 97. 15 Marsh, p. 98. 16 Marsh, p. 101. 17 Marsh, p. 107. 18 Douglas M. Charles, The FBI’s Obscene File: J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau’s Crusade Against Smut, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2012), p. 10. 19 Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI, (New York: Random House, 2012) p. 70. 20 Charles, p. 16. 21 Marsh, p. 117. A scan of one such envelope is available in the FBI file on page 34, and other on page 36. 22 ALSO SUBMITTED, 03/27/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 22, http://vault.fbi.gov/louie-louie-the- song/louie-louie-the-song/view, last accessed on December 16, 2014. 23 ALSO SUBMITTED, 03/04/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 35. 24 Report, 03/05/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 7. 25 Report, 03/16/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 15. 26 Report, 03/27/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 19. 27 “18 U.S. Code § 1465 - Production and transportation of obscene matters for sale or distribution,” Legal Information Institute, last accessed December 17, 2014. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1465 28 “Was ‘Louie Louie’ Banned in Indiana?,” Indiana Local Government Information Website, last accessed December 16, 2014, http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/Topics/Essays/Louie_Louie.htm 29 Marsh, p. 125. 30 Alexis Petidris, “Louie Louie: The Ultimate Rock Rebel Anthem,” The Guardian, January 23, 2014. Accessed December 17, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/23/louie-louie-ultimate-rock-rebel-anthem. 31 Report, 02/17/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 3. 32 Report, 03/15/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 114. 33 Report, 04/02/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 18. 34 Report, 04/14/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 28. 35 Report, 04/17/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 23. 36 Report, 04/22/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p.44. 37 Report, ibid. 38 Report, 05/17/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 45. 39 Report, 04/22/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 44. 40 Report, 05/17/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 46. 41 Document DE-145-420, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 50. 42 Ibid, p. 54. 43 Report, 07/30/64 Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 71. Herrick 17

44 Ibid, p. 72. 45 Marsh, p. 135. 46 Report, 08/23/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 77. 47 Report, 09/16/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 81. 48 Report, 09/07/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 101. 49 Marsh, p. 137. 50 Report, 09/22/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 92. 51 Report, 11/30/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 109. 52 Report, 12/06/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 112. 53 Marsh, p. 117. 54 Marsh, p. 97. 55 Marsh, p. 117. 56 Eric Predoehl, “Why LOUIE LOUIE?” Last accessed December 17, 2014, http://www.louielouie.net/04-why- louie.htm. 57 Letter, 02/04/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 13. 58 Letter, 06/18/95, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 64. 59 Letter, 06/25/65, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 66. 60 Marsh, p. 136. 61 J. Edgar Hoover, “Combating Merchants of Filth: The Role of the FBI,” University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Vol. 25, No. 3, (March 1964), p. 469. 62 Document DE 145-420, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p.82. 63 Marsh, p. 71. 64 J Edgar Hoover, “Communist Target – Youth,” last accessed December 17, 2014, https://www.archive.org/stream/communisttargety1961unit/communisttargety1961unit_djvu.txt. 65 Charles, p. 18. 66 Hoover, “Communist Target – Youth.” 67 Weiner, p. 115. 68In 1958, only a few months before the Payola scandal would explode, television experienced its own Payola scandal with the Quiz Show scandal. It came to light that several popular quiz shows had been rigged, and public outrage was so vast as to even merit comments from President Eisenhower, who called it “a terrible thing to do to the American people.” Maurice Isserman, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960’s, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 371. 69 Steve Lawson, Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle, (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), p. 246. 70 Lawson, ibid. 71 Lawson, ibid. 72 Marc Fisher, Something In the Air, (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 89. 73 Kerry Segrave, Payola In The Music Industry: A History, 1880 – 1991, (Jefferson: McFarland, 1994), p. 81. 74 Lawson, p. 247. 75 Lawson, p. 240. 76 Lawson, p. 246. 77 Segrave, p. vii. 78 Lawson, p. 248. 79 Lawson, p. 242. 80 Lawson, p. 245. 81 Fisher, p. 82. 82 Fisher, p. 78. 83 Fisher, p. 85. 84 Fisher, p. 89. 85 Fisher, p. 91. 86 Seagrave, ibid. 87 Hoover, J. Edgar, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation: The Protector of Civil Liberties,” American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 46, No. 8 (August 1960), p. 837 88 Paul Harvey, November 28, 1959, “Paul Harvey News,” Paul Harvey, part 04 of 09, p. 125. Last accessed December 14, 2014, http://vault.fbi.gov/paul-harvey/paul-harvey-part-04-of-09/view. Herrick 18

89 Lawson, p. 249. 90 Weiner, p. 199. 91 Charles, p. 40. 92 Roger Semon and Ernst Jorgensen, “Is Elvis The Biggest-Selling Record Artist?,” February 12, 2001. Last accessed December 15, 2014, http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/is_elvis_the_biggest_selling_recording_artist.shtml 93 Glenn C. Altschuler, All Shook Up: How Rock ‘N’ Roll Changed America, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 40 94 Altschuler, ibid. 95 Peter Guralnick, “How Did Elvis Get Turned Into A Racist?,” , August 11, 2007. 96 Guralnick, ibid. 97 Philip Jenkins and Daniel Maier-Katlin, “Satanism: Myth and Reality In A Contemporary Moral Panic,” in Critical Readings: Moral Panics and the Media, (New York: Open University Press, 2006), p. 100. 98 Report, 2/17/64, Louie Louie (The Song), Part 01 of 01, p. 3. 99 Petidris, “Louie Louie.” 100 Lawson , p. 246. 101 Lawson, p. 241. 102 Lawson, p. 244. 103 Lawson, p. 243. 104 Seagrave, p. 19. 105 Charles, p. 40. 106 Charles, p. 41. 107 Charles, ibid. 108 Charles, p. 42. 109 Ibid 240 110 116 111 Weiner, p. 117. 112 Petidris, “Louie Louie.” 113 Marsh, p. 84.

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